Systems and method for automatically restoring a hard drive after failure are provided. Disk recovery data may be collected and stored from an operational, online hard drive. When the hard drive subsequently fails, a client-specific recovery media may be generated, which may include a lightweight recovery environment. Restoration tasks may be completed automatically, thereby reducing an amount of user effort and/or expertise needed for restoration. Further, restoration tasks may be performed from a lightweight, client-specific disk recovery module, thereby eliminating processing overhead, such as that attributable to installing set up programs, rebooting a system during set up, or other overhead.